Biography

After receiving the doctoral degree, Kelley was a postdoctoral
researcher at Berkeley, held a joint appointment as a Von Humboldt
fellow with Gerhard Haerendel at the Max Planck Institute in Garching,
Germany, and then came to Cornell in 1975. He is a fellow of the
American Geophysical Union, and in 1979 he won that society's James
B. Macelwane Award. Kelley has been a member of the National Academy
of Science's Committee on Solar and Space Plasmas; the Management
Working Group on Solar Space Plasmas of the Office of Space Science,
National Aeronautics and Space Administration; and the National
Science Foundation Advisory Committee on the Atmosphereic Research
Program. In 1981 he won the Tau Beta Pi-Cornell Society of Engineers
award as the outstanding teacher in the Cornell College of Engineering.
Currently, Kelley is chair of the NSF Global Change Program's Upper
Atmosphere Component, CEDAR, and is the special advisor for atmospheric
science at the Arecibo Observatory. He was also elected James A.
Friend Family Distinguished Professor of Engineering, effective
February, 2001.

Research Interests

A variety of research methods can be used to probe the upper atmosphere
and the near-space regions of the earth. The techniques most suitable
for graduate-student involvement are sounding-rocket measurements,
ground-based radars, and lidars. Cornell has a long history of involvement
in the latter, since the radar-lidar observatory at Arecibo was
conceived here and continues to be operated by Cornell. Roughly
one-half of my research effort involves using such observatories-there
are six now operating at various sites around the world-to measure
wind and wave patterns from thirty to several hundred kilometers
above the surface of the earth. The rest of my research involves
the use of satellites and rockets to carry Cornell instrumentation
directly into the space environment. The measurements are interpreted
in terms of the physics of the atmosphere and ionosphere and both
global and localized features of the earth's electric field. Rockets
can also be used efficiently to study in detail specific atmospheric
phenomena such as thunder storms and the aurora. One of my goals
was to merge my knowledge of rockets with the expertise of the Cornell
radar community and mount an intensive study of the equatorial upper
atmosphere. This goal was realized in March, 1983 when I led a National
Aeronautics and Space Administration rocket campaign called "Condor"
that launched twenty-nine sounding rockets off the coast of Peru.
Cornell personnel manned the Jicamarca radar facility, which is
located just east of Lima, in this highly successful international
project. Similar projects were carried out in Greenland in 1985
and 1987, in the South Pacific in 1990, and in Puerto Rico in 1992.
Another project of this type is scheduled for February, 1998.

Kelley, M. C., and C. A. Miller. 1997. The electrodynamics of
midlatitude spread F. 3. Electrohydrodynamic waves? A new look
at the role of electric fields in thermospheric wave dynamics.
Journal of Geophysical Research 102(A6):11,539-47.